When I start using marketing terms around church folks, it sometimes makes them nervous. I understand that. Christians have a deep sense of purpose in what they do. So, when they hear formulaic approaches and terms like “impressions,“ “call to action,” and “conversion rate,” it can feel hollow. However, having worked in communications outside the church, then inside the church, and then outside the church again, it is clearer than ever to me that all of these terms, approaches, and metrics are in play whether you are trying to convert someone to follow Jesus or convert them to buying a hat. I understand that the gravity of these two conversions is very different, but the numbers behind them are the same.
So, let’s take a look at the definitions of these three terms. These terms are often used in reference to web-based transactions, but I hope to show you that the concepts are the same when trying to motivate church people to act. Whether you are trying to sign up people for a Bible study, looking for volunteers, or trying to nail down who is bringing food to a potluck-and whether you are trying to reach people through Sunday morning announcements, emails, or your website, understanding these concepts will be helpful in understanding how to better get the results you need.
In order to make this more relatable, I will weave in an example. Let’s say that our church wants to sign people up for a Monday evening Bible study. For the sake of this example, we would like them to sign up in advance so we have enough snacks or chairs or whatever. With that in mind, let’s dig in. So, how many times are we going to have to tell people about this in order to get people to sign up? Well… a lot.
Impressions
Impressions refer to the total number of times a piece of content is displayed or otherwise served in such a way that someone potentially sees or hears it. Think about scrolling Facebook for a moment. There are many messages in your feed. You may not notice, you may not interact, but they are there.
This is easily translated into church life. If we make an announcement about our Bible study in worship, that would count as an impression for everyone in the room, even if they aren’t paying attention. Same with your bulletin. If you publish something in the bulletin, it will count as an impression for every person who at least looked at the bulletin, even if they don’t notice the message.
An important note: There are rare exceptions, but one impression rarely has much if any, impact. There is a concept in marketing called The Rule of 7. It has been around since the 1930s and has become more nuanced, but the idea is that it takes at least seven impressions to get any one person to take action. Read more here.
Box: Counting impressions in church: announcements, bulletin, email, pre-worship slides, posters, text messages.
Call to Action
In marketing, a “call to action” or CTA refers to some type of prompt that encourages viewers or listeners to take specific action. One of the most well-known calls to action is Amazon’s “Add to Cart” and “Buy Now” buttons. What marketers have discovered over the years is that, even if someone is ready to take an action, they may not if they are not asked directly.
By the way, you can support PastorWill.net when you shop at Amazon.com using this link.
Marketers have also learned that a call to action will lead to more actions if it has the following traits:
- Clarity and Specificity – Is it clear what you are asking people to do and how to do it?
- Action Verbs – Are you using words that convey action, like click, call, or go?
- Value – Have you expressed why they should do what you are asking them to do?
- Urgency – Is there any reason people should do this now instead of later, or never?
Churches are notoriously bad at this. I can’t count the number of times I have seen or heard about something at a church when they needed people to give, volunteer, sign up, etc. but there was either no call to action or the next step was not clear, action-oriented, or of any clear value.
Let’s look at our Bible study example. Let’s say we are announcing it during worship.
No call to action: “We have a new Bible study starting Monday. It will meet in the fellowship hall, and we will be studying the Gospel of Mark.” Great! Do you want me to go? Do I need to sign up?
Weak call to action: “We have a new Bible study starting Monday. We will meet in the fellowship hall, and we will be studying the Gospel of Mark. Be sure to sign up!” Okay. How do I sign up?
Strong call to action: “We have a new Bible study starting Monday on the Gospel of Mark. You aren’t going to want to miss this. It is going to be a transformative journey through the Gospel. We have limited spots, and we need to confirm registration by the end of today. You can sign up by clicking the link you got in this week’s email, via the link that is in the bulletin, by scanning the QR code up on the screen right now or by visiting the registration table in the lobby.”
Conversion Rate
Figuring out your conversion rate takes a little bit of math. It’s okay if math is not your thing. This isn’t hard, and I will show you how to do it without even opening your calculator app.
The conversion rate is the percentage of people who complete a desired action out of the total number of people who receive a message about it (impressions).
Again, you can do this without knowing the math but, the formula looks like this:
Conversion Rate (%) = ( Number of Conversions / Total Impressions ) × 100
So, we have to be clear about what a conversion is. In our case, we would say how many people sign up for the Bible study. Remember, we said we wanted to know the number of attendees for chairs and snacks so we should clarify and say the number that “sign up in advance.”
It can be more difficult to measure in some situations, especially in things that happen outside of the digital world. On my website, I can easily track views and clicks and then compare them to orders. In a church, you may have impressions from paper bulletins, pre-service slides, posters, and other non-trackable sources.
However, you can estimate based on things like the number of people in worship, the number of bulletins handed out, the frequency of slides appearing, etc. As long as you use the same process every time, the conversion rate you determine can still be useful in comparing results across different approaches and activities.
Let’s make up some numbers for our Bible study example.
Impressions:
Worship announcements – 3 weeks:
- Week one attendance: 115
- Week two attendance: 105
- Week three attendance: 112
Total impressions: 332
Pre-service slides – 3 weeks:
For this, we might figure that the average attendance person sees each pre-service slide one time. This accounts for an average since some people get there early and see all the slides multiple times. Some get there so late they don’t see any, and some, while they are in their seats, don’t look up until service starts. Note: There are ways to get a better idea of the effectiveness of this but that will be for another post.
- Week one attendance: 115
- Week two attendance: 105
- Week three attendance: 112
Total impressions: 332
Worship Bulletin – 3 weeks:
Whether a church produces a multi-page order of worship, which includes announcements, or hands out a half-sheet with highlights of upcoming events, it can be tricky to understand how many people are actually looking at what is printed. Still, it doesn’t likely change over time so, as long as you count it the same way, it can be helpful in evaluating how people are responding.
- Week one bulletins distributed: 90
- Week two bulletins distributed: 100
- Week bulletins distributed: 105
Total impressions: 295
Churchwide Email
With emails, impressions are usually counted using the open rate. Open rate is simply how many people open the email on their computer or device. If you don’t know how to measure that, let me know, and I will write another post about it. If you want your conversion rate to look higher, you could also measure the click-through rate. That would tell you how many people clicked on the link in your email to read more or sign up.
- Week one email results: 200 sent – 100 open
- Week two email results: 200 sent – 75 open
- Week three email results: 200 sent – 85 open
Total impressions: 260
Grand Total of Impressions: 1479
Conversions = 20
In this case, I am just making this up. It seems like a nice size for a Bible study to me.
Before we look at the formula, I want to show you how to do this with no math. I know my total impressions: 1479. I know my conversions: 20.
I am going to this free conversion rate calculator and enter those numbers. And, I will see my answer:
Okay, if you want to do the math yourself:
Conversion Rate equals (Number of Conversions divided by Number of Impressions) multiplied by 100. Or,
Conversion Rate (%) = ( Number of Conversions / Total Impressions ) × 100
Our Conversion Rate is: 20/1479×100 = 1.352%
A Bit of Analysis
If you haven’t put much thought into this in the past, 1% might seem low. Though 20 people showing up for a weeknight bible study at a church with about 100 in worship every week is pretty good. So, what does this mean? Well, I haven’t found a good study on conversion rates in church, but anywhere between 1% and 5% could be considered a good conversion rate in general. The fact is the conversion rate number isn’t really important on its own.
Most church leaders aren’t interested in the impressions, calls to action, or conversion rates. They are interested in how many people show up for something like, in this instance, a Bible study. As a marketer, the first question I would ask before promoting something like a Bible study is, “How many people do I want to show up?”
If we started this process with a goal of 50 people signing up and only 20 do, an understanding of these factors may help us figure out why and how we might get more sign-ups in the future.
If a class, event, or whatever we are promoting is not getting the traction we think it should, we have some things we can examine to ask questions like:
Did we promote this enough? i.e., Did it get enough impressions?
Was the call to action clear enough? i.e., Was our invitation clear enough? Did we use action verbs in both print and spoken announcements? Did we express the value of what we were offering? And did we convey a sense of urgency?
Is there another issue? We can make as many impressions as we want and have a clear call to action every time, and it still may not work. Why? There could be any number of reasons. Maybe people are busy on Mondays. Maybe the topic isn’t appealing enough. Marketing can’t fix everything, but it can help you understand what is going on.
Understanding Impressions, Call to Action, and Conversion Rate Can Help Your Church Be More Effective in Mission
Measuring and evaluating these things can help you understand how to get more people involved in whatever you are doing as a church. Whether it is getting more people to attend your Bible study, trying to get more people to attend your church, or any other effort to get people to do something, understanding the effort you put in and how it relates to results can increase your impact.